The Daily bulletin. [volume] (Honolulu [Hawaii]) 1882-1895, 1887-07-20

WEDNESDAY, JULY 20, 1887.
ONE OF MANY.
A sLEEPING-CAR PORTER BOUND TO
MAKE MONEY.


"There is one sleeping-car porter
in this country who'll not die poor
if thrift and smartness count for
anything" said gentleman who
has just returned from trip to
California. ''Soon after we left
Omaha the porter of our car began
TO talk baseball and to let us all
know that he was a baseball crank.
lie grew rather familiar, too, con-
sidering his station, but nobody
objected, for it is always best on a
cross-country trip to keep on the
good side of a porter. Among the
passengers were several gentlemen
who take little interest in baseball,
and so, along in the afternoon, when
the porter told about the sport some
passengers had had the week before,
and suggested that jus to kill time
we initiate their example, 'the gem
men maxim up q baseball pool at
So a guess, de gemman guessin'
clostist TO de way dc fo' league
games come out to take de pot,
there were seven responses. After
the money had been paid into the
hands of one who was selected to
act as stakeholder, and the sub
scribers had written out their
guesses and signed their names to
them, the porter humbly asked per-
mission to come in. Though we all
thought the chap was displaying
considerable freshness, so long as
he had suggested the scheme, in
which we had begun to take good
deal of interest, there was no one
to object. So the porter put up his
S. and fled his guess with the stake
holder.
The next day we got paper at
Cheyenne, and you can imagine
how surprised we were when we dis
covered that only one man in the
party had named the four winners,
and that man the porter. The way
that fellow grinned when he put the
$40 away in his pocket made me
feel suspicious, and so, later on,
when another pool of the same kind
was proposed, decided to stay out
and keep an eye on the porter.
About 3 O'Clock the train stopped
at a little station, and ! saw the
porter making q break for the tele-
graph office. When he came out
he had a message, which he was
reading eagerly. He sat down in
the smoking-car and scrubbed some
thing on piece of paper, consult
ing his message as he did so, and
then walked back to the sleeping
car, remarking that he'd "give the
gemmen a chance to git pat of de
stuff back" and deposited with the
stakeholder So bill and the slip Of
paper I'd seen him writing on in the
smoking-car.
"Having found out what his game
was, took the stakeholder to one
side and said to him: This darby
is bunkoing us. 1t is now after B
o'clock. In New York and Boston
it is after 5. The games have been
played. We haven't been thinking
of that, but this darby has. He
just received a message telling him
which won, and he has named these
clubs and expects to take our
money, just as he did yesterday
$50 the stakeholder and l took
out all the guesses, changed them
all to read the same clubs that the
porter had named and put them
back. Then we posted the other
fellows. Next day when the returns
were opened and it was found that
each guesser had named the four
winners, it was worth five times S.
apiece to us to see the expressions
which chased each other up and down
that shrewd darky's face. "-TChi-
cago Herald.